Research & Expertise

Competence Centers at HESAV

Overview

It is in HESAV’s very nature, as a University of Applied Sciences, to foster synergies between its missions of education, research, and professional practice. To embody this cross-disciplinarity and address major social and health challenges, our institution has established Competence Centers through which its strategic projects and expertise will now be organized. This structure addresses the major issues arising from developments in the healthcare system, with a perspective that is both macro-level and closely aligned with real-world needs. Each of these Competence Centers brings together diverse, interdisciplinary, and interprofessional expertise. They provide a stimulating environment that enables our programs to collaborate in innovative and committed ways.

Inter-profesionnality: Coordination, collaboration, and teamwork across health professions

Interprofessionality is a key focus at HESAV, implemented through interprofessional teaching programs and research. It is deployed in collaboration with a community of collaborators and learners from different disciplines and professions. The main mission of the Interprofessional Competence Center is to train future healthcare professionals to collaborate efficiently with other healthcare and social professionals and understand the patients’ healthcare pathway in a complex and constantly changing healthcare system. It also aims to promote continuous interprofessional development. Through partnerships with healthcare institutions (throughout the healthcare settings) and other training institutions at the national and international level, it aims to meet the needs of the field and the healthcare system through teaching, research, and innovation.

Humanities in Care and Health: Human and social dimensions of care and health

Beyond biomedical aspects, the Humanities in Care and Health Competence Center explores how social, cultural, psychological, ethical and gender-related factors shape health and care. This involves research and reflection on what “care” means in its humanistic dimension — considering patients’ experiences, social determinants of health, gender issues and inequalities, societal contexts, patient rights, and how care is perceived and lived.

Health & Technologies: Their development, use and evaluation

Through an integrated and translational approach, the Health & Technologies Competence Center contributes to HESAV’s mission of re-shaping health by promoting responsible innovation, strengthening professional competencies, and supporting evidence-based decision-making in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

The Center focuses on the design, adoption, evaluation and critical analysis of health technologies, with the objective of ensuring that they are useful, usable, equitable and sustainable, and that they meaningfully improve care, education and health systems.

Bringing together expertise from health sciences, engineering, data science and end user, the Center supports the full lifecycle of health technologies, from needs identification and development to implementation, evaluation and scale-up. It operates across education, research and professional services, ensuring a strong links between scientific evidence, teaching and practice through:
(i) Integration of digital health, data and AI literacy into undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing education programs, as well as outreach to society.
(ii) Development of interdisciplinary research and innovation projects in collaboration with academic, clinical, industrial and public partners.
(iii) Provision of expertise, training and advisory services for the responsible evaluation and implementation of health technologies.

Do you have questions?

Contact us

Interprofessionality Head of Unit
Amélia Didier, Associate Professor

Deputy
Carla Ribeiro
Email: pole.interpro [@] hesav.ch

 

Humanities in Care and Health Head of Unit
Philippe Longchamp, Professor

Deputy
Emilie Bovet, faculty
Mathieu Arminjon, faculty
Email : pole.humanites [@] hesav.ch

 

Health & Technologies Head of Unit:
Ricardo Ribeiro, Professor

Deputy
Natalya Korogod, faculty
Email : pole.santech [@] hesav.ch